“Contain, delay and mitigate any outbreak”

These words from Public Health England have framed policy so far. The first phase (Contain) saw efforts to trace, test and isolate anyone carrying the virus and the people they had met. The second phase (Delay) has seen big efforts to impede the spread of the virus by keeping people apart and keeping them from places of work as well as from entertainment. The final phase (Mitigate) is to learn to live with the disease, limiting its spreads with sensible precautions with enough capacity to treat patients who do get it whilst we await vaccinations.

Their initial plan played down the extent of the controls needed for the second phase we are now in. They told us on March 3 that if we got to this stage it would mean “people distancing strategies such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large social gatherings- whilst ensuring the country’s ability to run as normally as possible”. They seemed to move on from the bit about as near normal as possible when they came to design the detail of the lock down. It emerged it entailed closing all physical shops other than food and medicines, stopping the car and homes markets and much else besides. They promised to “implement a distribution strategy for the UK’s stockpiles of key medicines and equipment” . After early issues with inadequate supplies the army was brought in to help and orders stepped up to business. .

The idea of delaying the virus was to reduce “the risk of overlapping with seasonal flu and other challenges that the colder months bring”. This implies they expected to lift the controls come late Spring and early summer.

We now see some other countries deciding to relax their controls progressively but carefully in the next few weeks. China has done so. Austria has just set out a timetable starting next week by re opening lots of small shops. Sweden and South Korea have not gone very far in imposing controls in the first place though Sweden is now taking more powers. The issue is what is the trigger to start relaxing the controls? Is it a tailing off in the death rate? A tailing off in the recorded number of new infections? How much value can we place on the numbers for new infections when most people that get it stay at home and are not tested?

We do need greater visibility on how this crucial call will be made. Some will argue the controls must go on for longer to avoid a possible second wave. Others will point to the big economic damage delays in getting back to work creates. As there was always a three phase strategy it would at least be good to know what the trigger is for going to the third phase and putting Shut Down UK behind us.

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Borders, especially Airports have not been and were not closed. There was no testing or quarantine of people who arrived from virus hotspots. Thousands came in and went straight to public transport, some even videoed themselves!

Only people tested upon arrival were illegal economic people in dinghys from France!

4,000 prisoners released after medical officer Harries said on TV family members without symptoms not allowed to visit other family me,bets without symptoms. But Buckland thought it was okay for prisoners to be treated better than law abiding citizens!

How many ministers or MPs have gone to second homes after lock down? I saw Osborn on TV last where it claimed he was in Somerset, does he live there now or is it a bolt Hole? I thought he was against the Turnip Taliban?

Hector Drummond has some clear graphs: “of the respiratory death figures from the ONS figures for England and Wales up to March 27, 2020 (end of week 13)… (the ONS’s Covid-19 deaths are neither a subset of respiratory deaths nor additional to it, but they will partly overlap.)
What’s astonishing about this graph is that despite there being 539 deaths in the Covid-19 category for week 13, the respiratory deaths total for that week is totally normal… up to 27 March there have been 3284 less respiratory deaths in 2020 than the five-year average.”
As he says: “Even I am astonished by these graphs. I was expecting to see something in the graphs by week 13, even if I wasn’t expecting anything scary. But there’s just nothing. And you can’t say the lockdown caused this, because the UK lockdown had only been going for four days by this time. We’ve locked down the country for a supposed mass killer that still isn’t visible in the stats… why isn’t the ONS doing graphs like these?” https://hectordrummond.com/2020/04/08/week-13-ons-graphs-still-nothing/
With a similar story in the USA & Europe: http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2020/04/06/an-exit-strategy/#comment-1103691

Richard: “What’s astonishing about this graph is that despite there being 539 deaths in the Covid-19 category for week 13, the respiratory deaths total for that week is totally normal… up to 27 March there have been 3284 less respiratory deaths in 2020 than the five-year average.”

Yes.

This has all been predicated on scare tactics.

And the BBC has been complicit in the lie.

2014/2015 was the ‘high water’ mark for respiratory deaths in January – with nearly twelve thousand in that month alone.

Make breakthroughs with validating drugs that currently anecdotally can alleviate symptoms or kill the virus or even find more existing drugs to do the same or explore the BCG vaccine thats now being mooted.

that indicates that a USA laboratory has already gained FDA approval for a mobile device that:

“You can get a positive result in five minutes and a negative result in 13 minutes.”

I think that its these and similar breakthroughs that will ultimately remove the Public Sector vice like grip from around this nation’s throat, because there’ll be too much evidence and case history (particularly from a rabidly litigious country like the USA) for them to attempt to withold such advances here.

However, I think it means we’ll be way behind the curve and back of the queue for supplies etc and I think we’ll probably end up as one of the most damaged economies amongst the leaders at the start of the crisis.

I’m no longer holding out much hope that our Public Bodies will be at the front of the charge.

However, I think public support for an endless lockdown will soon evaporate when they see other countries getting back on their feet, with economies in far greater shape, whilst we’re still spouting mantra and little else.

Frankly, I will no longer trust the institutions that I thought were there to protect us unless there’s serious radical reform.

the approach to changing the lockdown approach needs to be “war gamed” or “computer modelled” in lots of dimensions before we do it. it should be based on the best computer model we can do, which is iteratively updated as we learn more about the virus.
decisions should not be made by politicians plucking straws out of the national game of kerplunk.
the lock down is there to allow expansion of healthcare resources, work on therapies & vaccines, and for us to put lots of thought into changing lockdown moving forward.
so the computer model should be made public domain, and peer review encouraged. we should ask some other universities to look at it in parallel without adding to the burden of the imperial college team.
Fauci should be listened to carefully, he knows what he is talking about, and has been saying the truth regardless of his powerful boss saying strange things. Fauci last night, for instance, said that he doesnt know for sure yet, as more info will emerge, but his optimistic prediction would be that schools could reopen in the autumn BUT not back to the way they were, rather, back with testing, tracing contacts, etc in place. This is entirely what the UK should be thinking too. We need our equivalent to Fauci, our chief medical officer is not a specialist in the same way he is.
So politicians, 1 get the model source code made public domain 2 encourage peer review of the model 3 study the model yourselves 4 push for a specialist like Fauci at the top and visible so that you can question him 5 dont just pick straws out of the national kerplunk game
Thanks

We need to look at the knowns and not the unknowns. Those talking of a second wave are talking an unknown. They have no scientific knowledge and are merely fear mongering. What is known is the damage to the economy if this continues. This can be measured by the number of companies going into insolvency and the levels of people claiming unemployment benefit.

I believe that the government needs to put out a ‘positive’ plan to reopen the economy. Construction sites, small business and the self employed (eg window cleaner) where some social distancing can easily be maintained would send a ‘positive’ message to markets that the UK is open for business and will return to full normality at a given date.

Sir John. I cannot stress enough that now is the time for Ministers and others to put out cautious but positive messages. This will encourage both employers and investors to keep faith and lessen the damage this shutdown has caused. The media, for their own selfish ends, have been played this drama for all its worth. It is time to start to counter this negativity and brush the doom mongers aside.

And the BBC fails to scrutinise China or its information. I doubt many know the name Xi Jinping. The BBC might add a disclaimer to Chinese figures “… that’s if they are to be believed” but nothing at all like the scrutiny undertaken in a news report followed by journalist interpretation and then expert analysis directed at Trump or Boris.

Where is the scrutiny of Chinese information and when do the BBC go into detail about what went wrong with the World Health Organisation ?

Up until mid January the WHO were telling us that this was not a contagious disease between humans and based on this left wingers (Nancy Pelosi) were shaking hands and hugging people in viral hot spots in New York (and others in Italy) expressing their usual fears about a ‘right wing’ backlash that is a figment of their fevered imaginations.

Not an easy one. Todays hospitalisations and death rate are a result of what may have happened to the patient ten or fifteen days previosly. We need to see a definite downward trend in the numbers to about half the level they peaked at before any confidence can be shown in a relaxation. Much is also down to the sensible behavior of the people during the coming out of it stage. Any failure in the economy and it’s ability to resume is down to the inadequacy of the financial measures put in place to avoid it or the agencies tasked with applying it. As ever the small print was more debillitating than the rhetoric.

The Govt has given no explanation of this, it has not explained any consideration of the impact of its actions (e.g supply side shocks can suppress growth and hence gains in life expectancy for decades). Even the simple case of delaying a hip.operation for a year can take more than a year of quality life away from a person. It is obviously complex and the Govt is in a tough position, but by now one would have thought that a.more complete cost-benefit analysis would have been presented. All we get is one qualitative metric – “the curve”.

I am totally in favour of a measured but prompt return to normal, no matter where in the globe.

It’s all very well saying how precious individuals’ lives are, but now there are reports that medical care is being diverted from those with other dire maladies, prioritising covid19 patients, so doctors are being constantly required to justify their ethical position while carrying out their professional duties. If you are in excruciating pain because of an arthritic hip, would you be happy to have your elective but curative surgery cancelled because a covid19 infected patient with only 50% recovery chance got priority over your ITU bed/facilities needs?

Given the financial support (what an inadequate word!) every country is trying to give to its economy, nations are going to need people going back to work as soon as possible – no point in keeping people alive and then letting them starve or freeze to death because there’s no way of earning a living and the economic burden of the state has caused collapse.

The first phase was to leave the airports open to allow the jet set to distribute the disease all over the country. Hardly “Contain”.
The delay phase we are in isn’t so much to limit the disease, but to permit the NHS to acquire the disease in its corridors, so the staff either catch the disease and hopefully recover, or maintain hygiene so they don’t infect more patients.
Once the disease has run its course through the NHS, the isolation rules can be relaxed, with the NHS able to cope with the infections spreading through the community.
If the NHS falls over, that looks bad for the Government. Remember, this isn’t about the science, it’s about the ballot box.

Nobody has really experienced a tanked economy. The Govt got away with murder in 2008 when they managed to blame the bankers. And they cushioned the issue with massive intervention.
This one is ‘too big to catch’ but at least we don’t have to fund our share of the collapsed EU – having left.
(I hope I am right about that JR – in spite of being one transition’)

The public sector is using this issue to embed itself, to protect itself from reform and to encourage an uncritical environment to immunise itself from critical analysis. From the NHS right through to the BBC. The political aspects of this event are of concern to those who believe that the political State and its components are a threat and have been for many years.

We are being exposed to public ethos propaganda by a political public sector that acts like a political organisation and people mustn’t be deceived by it

Dr Hillary and Good Morning Britain are going on and on yet again about the “wonderful NHS”. If it is so wonderful to have a state run, top down, virtual monopoly NHS then why on earth was it’s pandemic planning so absolutely pathetic? Criminally negligent in my opinion. Why is it so lacking in ICU capacity, ventilators, testing capacity, PPE, ECMO ….. compared to most (rather more sensibly run) health care systems around the world in comparably rich countries? Why is it apparently very sick people’s duty to “protect the NHS” by staying at home and not bothering them? Just stay in the nursing home or at home and die please seems to be the main message.

The way to improve health care (and get more money into it) in the UK is more freedom and choice for patients and for the NHS to charge the patients (the ones who can afford to pay or can insure). More of the socialist monopoly NHS rationing system is not the answer at all.

Having said this there are clearly many excellent and hard working clinical staff within the NHS, but they too are failed by the NHS structures, funding and management systems.

Emotion over brain every time with the NHS alas. No politicians has the courage to do anything to change it. Boris it seems has fallen for the NHS “the Envy of the World” religion too it seems. Let us hope he has the courage to ditch this, HS2 and his climate alarmist, green crap lunacy too one he recovers. Plus reform the dire propaganda organisation the BBC.

The NHS did not value its staff sufficiently to spend .002% of its income to provide proper protective gear for them.
A proper insurance scheme (where the bidders are not allowed to cherrypick but have to accept the sick) works wonderfully. In addition the insurance company makes sure that the standards are up to scratch, and that only those insured i.e. the British, are treated. See Germany!

Good questions. It will be difficult to get good answers if, as today’s papers suggest, there is a power vacuum at the top of government as long as the PM remains in intensive care.

Yesterday’s briefing was ambiguous. Answers to some of the journalists’ question implied that the review expected after the coming weekend would be deferred. This would be a mistake and betrayal of trust.

No one mentioned the state of play of the Welcome Foundation/Portion Down survey, based on its advanced antibody testing, into the spread of the disease. Last week Mr Hancock said the results of the first survey would be available early this week and would be shared with the public. Failure to follow up this commitment would also be a mistake and betrayal of trust.

Fear and ignorance of the Corona virus needs to be replaced with confidence and knowledge to inform future decisions on public policy. The shutdown is immensely damaging to NHS patients suffering other conditions, to the wider national well being not to mention to people’s ability to earn a living. The government will need decisive leadership to make the switch from phase 2 to phase 3.

The president of the European Research Council — the EU’s top scientist — has resigned after failing to persuade Brussels to set up a large-scale scientific programme to fight Covid-19.

Professor Mauro Ferrari, who started a four-year term as leader of Europe’s flagship scientific institution on January 1, submitted his resignation to EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday afternoon.

I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19,” he said in a statement to the Financial Times. “I arrived at the ERC a fervent supporter of the EU [but] the Covid-19 crisis completely changed my views, though the ideals of international collaboration I continue to support with enthusiasm.

Health is a national competence. This means the EU is not responsible for dealing with it. This is why you have got different strategies in different countries – some more successful than others.

Which all renders the arguments of Brexiteers even more irrelevant. You complain that the EU is too controlling. And then you complain that it doesn’t control enough. Anyway, it is not your business. You left.

You make it sound like PHE is a totally autonomous entity, it is not, being an executive agency of the DfH and thus under the over all control of the Govt and their policies (just as the CMO is). If there has been any failings the buck stops at 10 Downing Street, and ultimately the party of Govt.

jerry, I disagree with you, the heads of the executive agency need to stand up and be counted for their inaction.

The problem with big organisations is that buck-passing goes on unremarked, why are the heads on £200,000 per year if they have no responsibility for anything? If the buck stopped with me and I was a minister I’d get rid of the entire agency and say ok I’ll take the reward and do it myself.

@a-tracy; But such a Executive Agency is not free to do as they please, they are constrained by both the policies and budgets set by the govt of the day. But you are correct about big organisations passing the buck, and they don’t come any bigger than the govt of the day who had three to plan for the predicted Coronavirus pandemic, even if we ignore the disregarded 2016 stress-test for a once in a 100 years severe Flu pandemic.

Ignoring both the PHE & DfH, come mid March 2020 the Govt were not ready with HMT, DfE nor DEFRA policies to cope with such a pandemic either.

Perhaps I’m being to unkind to the Govt, that it was impossible to plan for such a known-unknown, but then why are some so intent on trying to blame PHE?!

You ask; “why are the heads [of PHE] on £200,000 per year if they have no responsibility for anything”

To be public fall guys perhaps, with all the damage to their professional reputations that follows, taking the blame for the inactions of central govt – which, after all, is why such agencies are set up [1], its called ‘deignability’, I seem to recall the preventable damage caused by the recent floods was not blamed on govt policies but inaction of the Environment Agency…

[1] nothing these executive agencies do could not be done directly from within a Govt Ministry, Department or LGA, as it used to be

If the lockdown continues much beyond this coming weekend there will be trouble.
Businesses and people are going under whilst the public sector continues its pointless march.
This is real apartheid and the general public is restless. Destroy the private sector and the public sector is no more.

The key to a return to work and an end to wrecking the economy is to allow patients to receive the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin therapy used in S Korea and the Far East, and now becoming available across the pond. HCQ has been available for many decades to treat malaria and arthritis and its side effects are well understood. One doctor in LA said for example that his “very, very ill” patients had recovered in 8 to 12 hours following treatment with HCQ. But the general experience seems to be recovery within about five days. I could post a number of links to provide the evidence but I have learned that is the quickest way to get your comment disappeared. We in this country are simply not allowed to know about HCQ. And I can guess why.

Sir John – -‘The first phase (Contain) saw efforts to trace, test and isolate anyone carrying the virus and the people they had met.’ Really? Where was evidence? Testing virtually didn’t happen.
‘The second phase (Delay) has seen big efforts to impede the spread of the virus by keeping people apart and keeping them from places of work as well as from entertainment.’ This phase was itself delayed.
Mitigate – learning to live with it – seems to centre on only going shopping once a week. In the meantime the economy has nose dived, and problems of spreading continue with hundreds of flights, hardly any testing and confusion over whether an Exit is possible in the weeks or even months ahead.

China is a brutal, authoritarian State. I don’t even trust the British State never mind a oppressive and manipulative one that is the Chinese government. China and the CCP have consistently lied and now our host references them as though it’s a fact. We are doomed when when of our most esteemed Parliamentarians believes such nonsense

The government is able to manipulate the numbers to quite a large extent.

For example, they can either extend or defer testing among the population at large. They can interpret the death of anyone with even the mildest CoViD-19 symptoms as being CoViD-19-related. The can decide whether or not to include deaths in care homes, making a presumption about what proportion would have been CoViD-19-related. And so on.

In the end, the incidence of CoViD-19 deaths may not be very different than a flu pandemic with populations left feeling they have all been part of some vast social experiment. Let’s hope they find a way out of this experiment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Today we read from multiple news sources that the Chinese communist regime has announced that restrictions on travel in Wuhan in Hubei province and elsewhere have been lifted, after the regime announced that for the first time a day with no deaths. We should recall that the CCP changed the goalposts on reporting the number of cases six times in January.

It was Xi Jinping’s decision to allow Chinese people to travel back home after their enforced long, extended Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January that visited the Chinese plague virus upon the world. Coincidentally at that time the WHO advised that restrictions on travel were uncecessary and “racist” and so Chinese living and working in Europe, the Middle East and the east coast of the USA returned bringing the virus with them.

Asian countries such as Taiwan, HK, Singapore and S Korea knew better, banned travellers from China and now – as hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths have occured in Europe – they have their epidemics well under control.

A second wave of infections emanating from China as they lift travel restrictions in an attempt to “prove” they have “beaten” the virus will be denied, the Chinese propaganda machine will go into overdrive, dissident voices will be “disappeared” and the CCP will claim “success”

As the second wave of infections that China is about to unleash on the world results in millions of deaths, at what point will China’s action be viewed as an act of war?

“Contain” – really, there was no effort to contain this virus and the “Delay” phase didn’t kick in until much later, many would say too late.

It will be interesting to see what Germany has actually done, testing on it own is not the solution, it’s what you do with those test results that seems to have made the difference.

Interesting comments on BCG vaccinations yesterday, lets see where that takes us.

And when this all subsides, there will be and are calls for an independent public enquiry – I don’t think a “public enquiry” in this country has ever been useful, mostly it causes delay and authorities never fully implement the enquiry recommendations, so will it be worth the cost and effort?

And yesterday 63 more lottery winners were ferried across the channel by the border taxi service.
Not a peep from Pritti Patel or any other minister.
We really are mugs being locked down whilst the rest of the world marches in.
How many of them are Merkels boys and girls.

bill,
Give us facts to prove your claim that “they will all be sent back”
My research shows a report of 6% of all asylum seekers
crossing the channel being returned. in the year to October 2019
Source Sky News.

Dear Edward2, Could you be more specific about ‘your research’, please. Otherwise you are as much an empty vat as the people you criticise. How can you be so sure that Sky News is a reference that can be trusted?

It will be interesting to see whether they will be able to maintain the idea that the NHS is the envy of the world when all the numbers are reckoned, especially when we compare with a fairly similar nation in size, Germany.

In answer to your basic question. Crudely, no one could know, this highly contagious virus has neve been this way before.

What is called science, is at best ‘best guesses’ based on vaguely similar previous experiences. All we know is there is no profound logic other we have no cure and contact causes spread.

The transparency being shown is a bit of a charade. Infections may be correct, but deaths, are people just dying with Corvid in their system or are the dying ‘because’ of Corvid. The difference between the 2 definitions is massive. If those charged with guiding us through don’t have a grip on that, there is in reality no point in them pontificating on any of it

China had lockdown in Wuhan for 2.5 months and now their people are being tracked with threat of enforced lockdown if they go near anyone with a temperature.

I cannot see how, having followed the strategy of scare, petrify and worry, to protect hospitals from becoming overflowing with patients being treated in corridors, movement can be relaxed before the end of April.

To end our incarceration we need to be able to test en mass and then trace and isolate contacts. We are told we will do 100,000 tests per day at the end of April. That still doesn’t solve the problem of public transport providing a petri dish to incubate spread so maybe the easing will be for local workers only.

Just as an aside we need a celebrity or politician to be found doing something very stupid in their private lives to give the 24 news cycles something else to talk about.

With no sport or no other news there is far too much pontificating by the media. I like Fergus Walsh of the Beeb but to give him access to ICUs when families aren’t allowed to visit dying loved ones seems wrong. But the news cycle needs content.

I am prepared to entertain the real possibility, that they have reduced it to levels where high vigilance, along with rigorous tracing and isolation of sporadic cases, and of suspected ones, can enable life to return to something like normal.

That is what the videos posted by many westerners there also show.

It is likely that some aspects are misrepresented too, either by accident or by design.

Actually it was always a four phase strategy, not three. That was explained in early press conferences. But anyway.

“The issue is what is the trigger to start relaxing the controls? Is it a tailing off in the death rate? A tailing off in the recorded number of new infections? How much value can we place on the numbers for new infections when most people that get it stay at home and are not tested?”

Not sure why you keep asking this, it has been clearly explained. The lockdown is to keep admissions to ICU and needing ventilators below the NHS capacity. Both of these numbers can be measured with 100% accuracy. So hospital admissions need to be seen to be trending down (or strictly, the gap between capacity and admissions needs to be trending up given capacity is being raised).

Hospital admissions only need to trend down when they are at capacity. the Brompton hospital has 4 patients! They are putting patients in the Nightingale hospitals for photo opportunities, they have not yet been required.

Mitigate should have been part of each phase surely
This should have involved means to bolster the immune system of us all.
It should also have meant being open to different treatments.

The establishment has failed so far in mitigation. We should be asking why?
It probably comes down to the attitude of those that rule on what services/drugs/treatments can be used. For far too long the NHS has been the worshipper of every possible drug treatment, ignoring alternatives that cost less. There are unethical reasons for this, for we badly need an NHS that encompasses all medical knowledge.
For CV they even ignore an existing drug that has been effective elsewhere..!

I’ve been to 5 funerals in 6 weeks none died of the virus, funeral directors are very slow I’ve never known any cremation to be more than 25 minutes in normal times now they 45 mins and we are not hurried at all if it’s on MSM IN A NEWSPAPER I DONT BELIEVE A WORD OF IT ANYMORE whatever they tell us its the opposite you can bet. the power cuts will be next to stop us talking on here and on the phones

I would suggest when deaths are down by very significant levels, and when we have a much larger stable capacity for hospital treatment, with medical staff getting the correct PPE equipment.
In other words when we have a buffer of all the above in stock.

Given we are not yet geared up for mass testing, and the antibody test appears as yet to be unreliable, Quite honestly we do not have a clue as to the real numbers of people who have it or who has had it.

The first phase of release of controls would I suggest be those who can guarantee distancing between workers, and workers and customers.
Those working outside would appear to have the best chance of returning first, although having said that two construction type workers (hi vis tabards) are presently sitting on a wall opposite my house, and have been chatting away to each other for more than 10 mins now, within touching distance of each other.

Clearly they do not understand common sense rules, like so many others.

Would be sensible that those who are in the higher risk group, continue to self isolate for many weeks to come after the lock down is finally released, and until deaths from the virus are down to zero.

The game changer would be a proven rapid and accurate testing facility/procedure and a proven vaccine.

They can easily be mis-interpreted as representing all cases (not even a simple ToolTip to pop up what Cases means), when from what I can determine they represent “positive test result” cases.

Hence from what I can fathom, they don’t include those that have had the disease, but with no or mild symptoms so are not reported.

This can lead to a dangerously skewed impression of a far higher (alarming) death rate to the naive viewer, than I think is the actuality, though spookily have no data to confirm.

Similarly, the “Recovered Patients” indicator was finally removed because it remained static for days on end and gave such a woeful figure that it implied barely anyone survives.

To anyone that has been admitted to hospital for a serious condition, PHE’s excuse of being unable to collate essentially discharge data, beggars belief.

Private Sector Managers would be quickly regarded as Unfit for Purpose (if not shown the door) for the same woeful practices.

I also think the Scottish numbers are a running farce, resulting in blips against trend, that can be used by alarmists to scream “We’ve Lost Control Captain”.

Whether that is due to incompetence or political manipulation I’ve no idea at present.

Due to Mission Creep and until I see otherwise, I think the policy so far is the following:

– use an existential threat to get a willing, unquestioning population to accept oppression
– make them destitute and dependent
– remove education and skill training
– produce a weak, dependent population that’s easy to manipulate
– use internal passports based on ideological not immunity testing to control movement
– return society back to a feudal system

My guess is there’s steps and consequences I’ve missed and they may not necessarily be in the right order.

I think what I’ve described is regime change by consent, there are a number of examples in the 20th Century, by societies that weren’t stupid, just scared. My guess others previously.

From what I can remember, none of them ended well (for the majority at least).

So everyone bang your saucepans, clap your hands or Jazz Hands (could that be a new salute) and welcome in a Brave New World.

Again we have reports in the press of uselessness and obstructiveness of the quango public health England (PHE) which it is alleged (inter alia, by one of the Country’s most distinguished cancer specialists) is preventing the distribution of positive blood samples to private labs. If we are to find a way through this crisis we need all the resources and ingenuity of the private sector. This has been very clearly recognised, already with good results, in the US by President Trump. In the U.K. it seems the entire public health bureaucracy is wedded to statism and suspicion and hostility to the private sector.

The immediate solution is for ministers to issue direct orders so as to force cooperation. The near term solution is to replace the people responsible, but the medium term solution after this is to get rid of these quangos. The main reason Germany is conducting so many more tests is they have many private independent labs – and I guess no equivalent to PHE.

The scary thing here in the Fens is the number of people on the web asking for the police to crack down on gatherings – especially of “foreigners”. There seems to be an anger that they are not playing the game with the rest of the population. Another source of irritation is, of course, teenage boys…
The Police have been polite and, to date, seem to have stuck with the law made in parliament, not the utterances of ministers. But I hope they can hold the line against the pressure of a lot of shouty people.

It’s quite remarkable, how some people continue to be more stressed by imaginary problems, such as their country’s being a European Union member, than by the very real ones to which every one of us is now subject.

I have a little reel of plastic tape, to cover that tiny ring of gold stars on your number plate – fifty quid and it’s yours, John.

You should relax controls as soon as is practical for most areas of economic activity. Providing the risks of spreading Coronavirus are low or can be mitigated by sensible precautions. For example open up all retailers to a click (or phone) and collect type arrangements. Whilst people working from home would continue to do so, but allowed to go to the office to pick up equipment. In many other areas controls could be tightened, for example by issuing and wearing face masks.

There’s an article in The Telegraph today, that shows the PHE are still refusing to work with private laboratories. Requests for samples are still being ignored.

In a crisis, generally, everyone rallies round ( as the private sector are doing) Why then, are PHE being so ‘precious’? Do they not want to get on top of this crisis?

Unless they get their act together by accepting offers of help, this crisis will continue for far longer than necessary and more lives will be lost. And a lifting of the lockdown can’t even begin to be implimented.

They’re arguing about what colour bucket to use to put out the fire while the house burns down.

Why has the government not yet relaxed the rules to allow people to access their pensions funds by borrowing from them to assist them and their businesses?

It seem the government has hugely underestimated the demand for the 80% furlough scheme? What on earth did they expect? After tax and ni on the extra 20% and the cost of getting to and from work and lunches most are clearly better of not bothering to work for 37 hours for perhaps an extra £15. Which treasury dopes got this so wrong. It was obvious to anyone sensible and in touch with real business realities.

And ANOTHER 63 are ferried into Dover. Instant financial burden on the rest of us – and probably a danger as well. But at least they were instantly tested for the virus – nice to know THEY get priority on tests.

I doubt “they” have a clue how to get the country back to work, Sir John. “They” suggested there was a point at which the virus would be likely to die out, but without relevant data the government will be working in the dark and can’t formulate a viable policy. Perhaps consider giving the problem to SMEs with a vested interest in this country, not avaricious multi-nationals or groupthink-tank theorists. The SME business environment should be easier to control, especially as many work in “silos”. When the plans can be implemented is anyone’s guess, however, the plan itself might add clarity to the situation.

School closures will be a thread running through any return to work, of course. It would be interesting to understand how many staff/children still attending school during lockdown have been affected by the virus….they were potentially higher risk. A few of these individual schools without a recent record of the virus could be candidates for a staggered return to normality, with agreed precautionary measures, e.g. 50/5o attendance. Be prepared for huge resistance until the “perfect environment” can be achieved, though!

Meanwhile, we have Easter to contend with and a potential psychological barrier if CV19 numbers begin to drop, as PHE have claimed. Perhaps there should be an enhanced message from government to enjoy the sunshine within the rules, but keep moving. We can still get a good tan when walking, although it’s rather more difficult to set up a barbecue…..mission accomplished!

That would require a rational quantifiable reason in making the first trigger decision i.e manufacturing line closed this month due to % lower £sales. The line will reopen when triggered by % increase £sales

However the governments decision to close schools and then to pass & implement new regulations was first triggered by fear of (1) the media (2) what other countries where doing and (3) not following the full PHE advise

So forget the economy, higher unemployment, SMEs going bust or comparisons with seasonal flu the only thing that will trigger the reversal of the lockdown is by alleviating the fears

The media must support the lifting of the lockdown. Other countries have shown some success of lifting lockdown and PHE advise the lifting of lockdown is now possible

I have information from someone who runs teacher distance learning courses and has just been awarded the contract for their entire nation of France (that they knew this coup was coming) and it was “for us” (the public sector).

The delay in closing schools, based on PHE advice that it would not make much difference, has not helped my neighbours. The youngest child had no symptoms when she came home and the parents had not been out to work. Now the older child is having a bad fever and congestion and the father is also ill. If this sort of infection within households is leading to many untested cases then this will not be helping to delay the strain on the NHS.

Today on the ITV morning programme Mayor Khan claimed that he had followed PHE advice that transport drivers needed no protective equipment. Bus drivers, who are obviously in contact with large numbers of passengers who were themselves exposed to infection, were not even given masks and gloves. Nine drivers have now died and TFL has put up plastic screens.

At least supermarkets got their act together earlier and supplied screens , gloves and masks. Apparently PHE told everyone else that masks didn’t work in case everyone bought one and there were none left for the NHS. Personally, I guessed that we would need one to go shopping and bought some in February. As all of the supermarkets have no deliveries for the for weeks on end, click and collect is the same and the small shops are also finding that they have too many deliveries, it looks like we will have to break the rule for the older and vulnerable to stay at home and go shopping wearing masks and goggles. The Chiief Medical Officer apparently has plans to deliver supplies through the NHS but hasn’tgot around to writing to everyone who has to stay in yet, including all those like my neighbours who have t0 self isolate. I don’t expect a letter as my GP doesn’t know about my knackered lungs and they are not even starting on the older people advised to stay at home again and again. SJR. Could you perhaps suggest to the government, who say it is now too early even to think about lifting the clampdown, that they tell the supermarkets to use private vans to deliver the non-frozen goods. Perhaps use ice cream vans to deliver the frozen. And take on more staff do put the orders together. There are plenty of trademen with vans sitting around with no earnings.But then PHE seem to like to avoid private help and do everything themselves.

The Government will be damned if they do, and damned if they don’t with regards to making the decision to allow people their freedom back and right to work , that’s providing they have a job to go back to.
The Government will rely on the advice given of course to make the decision , but I fear we will follow what happens in Europe first .
In my view to delay in a sensible return to normality much past the Easter break could have a lasting economic back lash that will last for years , along with the nations health and mental well being trashed .
Time to lead a little more than follow .

I think the Govt can avoid damnation if it gives a transparent and complete description of the decision, its parameters and how the evaluation was done. It needs to show full consideration not just narrow focus, so far it seems to talk only in direct effects of the virus and in terms protecting the NHS. It needs to be broader and rational.

My main concern here is the potential political /economic stasis from this crisis. Clearly, we wish the PM well and I have no doubt he will recover, but there must be clear direction and accountability of decision making. There are some very important decisions to be made and tp prevaricate will cause heavy economic and financial damage. We have to live with this disease like many others and cannot succumb our whole lives to it. The trend has been clear since before the lockdown and with the government deciding to downgrade it from an HCID on 19/03.

We must actively prepare to re-open the economy, and the press conference yesterday did not engender confidence with one of the advisors wittering about needing more data. There is plenty of data, they need to analyse, draw conclusions and make recommendations like analysts should do. The ground for stabilisation occurred before the lockdown was put in place which puts into grave doubt many of Ferguson’s unverifiable conclusions and suppositions.

We need to stop the emotional infantilisation of society and get a grip. As Napoleon stated….. ‘Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious than to be able to decide.’ That proposition will be sorely tested in the next few days and weeks. Are our politicians up to it though?

Contain: “The first phase (Contain) saw efforts to trace, test and isolate anyone carrying the virus and the people they had met.”

It is clear that John Crace in the Guardian doesn’t like Raab, today he blames your government for failing in the Contain stage “The Germans had taken the coronavirus more seriously at a much earlier stage than other countries and had planned accordingly. The UK was paying the price for its government having been too slow to act.”

Was this testing and contain decision Hancock and Johnson’s choice to make or PHE executives?
When PHE and our Government heard of this virus and realised it was being brought back in big numbers from people’s half-term holidays in Italy and Austria at the end of February what stocks of testing kits had they already stored up ready to use after being aware of the virus spreading out of China since January?
I’m intrigued about the testing kits, who makes them in the UK, what stock did they have already made, how many ingredients does a testing kit need and how fast can they be produced within in the UK? How dependent are we on test kits being imported?

We do need much “greater visibility”, particularly as there has been no convincing explanation of the choice to enter lockdown in the first place. Unfortunately all we are hearing is a group biased escalation of commitment, Mr Argar repeating the mantra of seeing evidence of being through the peak of the curve (i.e. cumulatively through the inflection). There has been zero justification as to why that corresponds to the decision point. Whilst I understand that Lifelogic will be pulling his/her hair out at Mr Argar’s Modern History background, and I appreciate that it takes a year or two to up one’s OR, decision science, ops, science, econometrics skills etc., I do wonder whether if the Govt for one moment stopped and took 10 minutes to remind itself of DCFs/NPV that it may then ask what the equivalent tools would be in lives/QALYs. Hopefully this might help the Govt escape its bias, or at least appreciate why some might be questioning the arbitrariness of the decisions it is making.

We are already out of step by having a less draconian and looser and later lock down. The possibility exists for a UK only catastrophe due to our dithering so you arguments for increasing the tolerance of contagion are extreme. How many more deaths do you think we should be prepared to accept ?
The argument for inflicting yet more economic agony on the country next year is now one almost no-one wishes to to represent. The task of the government is to get the UK up to speed on testing ( failed thus far) cancel Brexit at least for next year and give us all a chance to save our jobs.

Newmania, where are you getting your statistics from? How do you know how many children are in hospital with cv19 caused through being at school for longer than you’d have liked? How many of them had connections with people returning from holiday? How do you know how people in hospital caught it? We were told by the newspapers that a couple of doctors returning from ski holidays were the first diagnosed in Edinburgh. How do you know most of the spread wasn’t from connection with people coming back into the U.K. from holidays in Italy, Spain, Austria, Iran and other half term break destinations as well as all the docking cruise ships?

I’ve tried to discover how many people locally have been in our local hospital and have recovered, died or are still in hospital with cv19 and while the numbers are low here how they caught the virus but the information isn’t easy to find. Do you know where this data is?

Wuhan Airport has been open for many weeks for flights in and out, as anyone who watches global flight movements will be able to tell you. As someone who has known China for exactly 41 years, we really do need to be incredibly careful of ANY information coming out of that country. Martin in C, do you know nothing about China at all? Please stop quoting nonsense coming from Beijing as if it was fact!

Gesture politics by the metro mayor of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority giving free public transport to all NHS staff
Including Senior Consultant Doctors on £100k+ but excluding out-sourced agency cleaners
Including all NHS staff on guaranteed salaries but excluding care staff

Gesture politics using tax-payers money…..remember some are more equal

The appropriateness of all future steps relies upon understanding Covid-19 yet at present much is not known.

A present study (reported in yesterday’s South China Morning Post) led by Professor Huang Jinghe of Fudan University shows about 30 per cent. of patients fail to develop a level of antibodies sufficient to provide protection, indicating that a vaccine may not work in such patients and so having major implications for hopes of herd immunity.

Professor Jinghe queries whether #COVID19 will become something like seasonal flu, or chronic disease like hepatitis B, or just vanish like Sars. He notes that up until now we still lack imagination to tell.

The Public Health England approach might have relied too much upon the “like seasonal flu” hope.

I imagine the experts will wish to satisfy two criteria.
First that current cases admitted to hospital do not exceed capacity within the next 2 to 3 weeks. This will need to see a dropping off of daily admissions and an increase in daily recoveries and deaths. We are hampered by the apparent lack of published information on recoveries.
Second they will wish to see that the the epidemic does not accelerate after controls are lifted. This will mean that each new person infected must not infect more than one further new person. This can only happen if there are reduced restrictions, a voluntary change in behaviour, many people are infected so that there are fewer left to get infected, there are climatic effects that reduce the propogation of the disease. We are hampered by not knowing the number of people infected, this includes those that do not report the disease and those that do not show symptoms. The decision to tell people not to report to 111 unless they had severe symptons seemed stupid to me as we lost a vital source of information. Maybe this could be partly recovered with a widespread survey.
The second criteria is the difficult part of the equation as the time lag between relaxing restrictions and seeing their effect is around 2 to 3 weeks, and the accuracy of predictions by the experts is very poor. I imagine that they will wish to take a trial and error approach with 2 to 3 week steps, and will look at other countries that have relaxed earlier.
My hope is that they have completely underestimated the number of infected people, and the climatic effects, and that these start to kick in fairly soon, and become self evident in other countries.
I share your wish to relax restrictions as soon as possible.

I imagine the experts will wish to satisfy two criteria.
First that cases admitted to hospital do not exceed capacity within the next 2 to 3 weeks. This will need to see a dropping off of daily admissions and an increase in daily recoveries and deaths. We are hampered by the apparent lack of published information on recoveries.
Second they will wish to see that the epidemic does not accelerate after controls are lifted. This means that each new person infected must not infect more than one further person. This can only happen if there are reduced restrictions, a voluntary change in behaviour, many people are infected so that there are fewer left to get infected, there are climatic effects that reduce the propagation of the disease. We are hampered by not knowing the number of people infected, which includes those that do not report the disease and those that do not show symptoms. The decision to tell people not to report to 111 unless they had severe symptoms seemed stupid to me as we lost a vital source of information. Maybe this could be partly recovered with a widespread survey.
The second criteria is the difficult part of the equation as the time lag between relaxing restrictions and seeing their effect is around 2 to 3 weeks, and the accuracy of predictions by the experts is very poor. I imagine that they will wish to take a trial and error approach with 2 to 3 week steps, and will look at other countries that have relaxed earlier.
My hope is that they have completely underestimated the number of infected people, and the climatic effects, and that these start to kick in fairly soon, and become self evident elsewhere.
I share your wish to relax restrictions as soon as possible.

Well it can’t be a fall in deaths from respiratory diseases compared to average, because they were already below the five year average at the start of the lockdown. It’ll be interesting when the figures come out for the death rate since the lockdown, presumably theyll be well down given that the lockdown will have slowed he spread of all infectious diseases.

is there a date when countries become ‘modern’ by your description?
You could argue S.Korea is due to separation in 1948. Germany by merging East Germany with West Germany? China not so clear – 1912 or 1949? did enough change then to make a really old ‘country ‘ become ‘modern’? Norway separating from Sweden in 1905 – does that make it modern?
I suspect what you really mean is a description that suits your leaning – democratic, communist, dictatorship, socialist, collective etc – what term would you like to use?

It is going up again in Japan and Singapore. In Turkey it is rising. How can we hope to eradicate it like smallpox? It is out there now, escaped from China and in the world. Smallpox was eradicated with a vaccine and it took some time.

Good luck with that. It took over a century after Dr Edward Jenner came up with his smallpox vaccine before smallpox was eliminated, and something like 500 million deaths. Without a vaccine you will have no chance. Meanwhile I read that attempts to eliminate polio have been suspended for fear that distributing the vaccine will spread coronavirus. The threat is that not only will progress towards elimination in the remaining Afghan/Pakistani areas where it is prevalent be halted, but that it could spread again to other places where it has been eliminated.

Further thought, since the lockdown was justified on the basis of preventing NHS overload, remove it once the number of free beds in the NHS increases, or if you prefer when the number of admissions for respiratory diseases starts to drop. Since we are nearing the end of the flu season that should be pretty soon, even if Covid itself is not seasonal.

The shutdown was completely unnecessary and is a scandal. It has been brought about by the same type of people who issued alarmist propaganda in an effort to stop Brexit. Something will have to be done about these people. This can’t be allowed to happen again. There should be radical reform of the police, the courts, local government, the civil service and the media.

You are suggesting the lockdown should now be ended. The difficulty in unravelling things at this point is twofold:

(i). The need to save face – Lots of very important people, including experts, have made themselves look silly. These people, by their nature, won’t suffer a loss of face.

(ii). Sunk costs fallacy – considerable money and resources have been put into this hysterical overreaction.

The politicians need to throw the Imperial College idiots to the wolves. If they collude in confusing and conflating the figures, they go down too. They have to claim they ‘acted in good faith’ even if we know they have been foolish (again).
I’m afraid this lockdown goes on Boris long list of wrong calls.

It’s not just the economic damage but the damage to civil liberties and mental and physical health inherent in confining millions of innocent individuals to their homes. I’m lucky in that I still have to go to work but even I’m finding this lock-down stressful. Goodness knows how people in the inner cities and in tower blocks are finding it.

I thought I had implied all that. Sorry if I didn’t. I have been scared stiff about this curfew and its consequences right from its inception, but there has been this silver lining and it is worth stating. There were probably similar things in the war.

Once the infection numbers stop increasing and the deaths start to fall and the NHS intensive care capacity is clearly able to cope, even with a second infection bulge, the economy should start to be unlocked. We should not wait until everybody! is tested. The economy must be put back on its feet before it goes into irreversible intensive care and the future is blighted.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the NHS can only get money if there is some. Every day of lockdown reduced the money available to the NHS.
However wonderful people think the NHS we cannot all be slaves to it!

The only sure-fire way to get a return to work is by testing the relevant individuals. Why can we not learn from those who have achieved far better results than the UK?
Why do our so-called “experts” have to be so egotistical? They MUST be told to remove the blinkers of self-importance and put the health of patients FIRST and at once! Or remove them from the medical hierarchy.
The methods utilised throughout the Far East have been proven to be effective so it beggars belief that our country is not following their lead.
Previous experience with the SARS virus has been so valuable in their fight against Corona that there can be no logical reason why this country should ignore their positive results. It is not just frustrating it is lethal.

“Treasury jobs bail out to cost £40 billion, three times initial estimate.”

To me this indicates that a proper cost benefit analysis was never carried out, and that the government was ignorant of the intricacies of how our economy is built up, and particularly how the small business sector and individuals operate with complex dependencies and linkages between the different parts, enabling them to operate and survive in normal times. The system is fragile at the best of times, so a blow to one part can have a devastating knock on effect.

The government sledge hammer has dealt a blow that has inflicted irreversible damage on many of these small businesses and individuals, and it is no surprise that the bail out costs are over £40 billion. The costs will be much higher than that in reality as there are all sorts of people who cannot claim under the rules, and then of course there is the other cost to individuals in terms of health and well being, when they see their life’s work destroyed, and also to the fabric of society.

Some areas are going to look very different with businesses closed down on a large scale, and services will be under great demand, with people not being able to access the basic services that form a normal part of our lives.

Actually though…on closer examination.
PHE seems to update info without actually making it clear that they are doing so.
Presumably CV was not notifiable in 2016…had it been discovered then even?
Very confusing.

China has relaxed its controls extremely carefully because it is determined to prevent further outbreaks either in Wuhan or elsewhere. Any individual seeking to leave Wuhan has to download a ‘QR Code’ to indicate that he is a resident of a compound that has had no new cases for two weeks and that they personally have not been in contact with a confirmed case either. At the railway station they have to produce their QR code and ID and have their temperature taken before being allowed to enter. Where asymptomatic cases have been discovered subsequently, their compounds have been put back into lockdown. Streets frequented by foreigners who find obeying rules difficult have been sealed off.

The only countries which have successfully contained the coronavirus are those that have demonstrated an ability to produce a viable plan to end the epidemic and put it into action immediately, involving either a massive testing, tracing and isolating campaign without any relaxation and/or locking down infection hubs together with testing. Controls to prevent the introduction of new cases from abroad through quarantining are the norm. In South Korea individuals who are ordered to self-quarantine can be heavily fined for breaking quarantine orders.

JR should be demanding that the government produces a plan to reduce the transmission rate of coronavirus to well below one and maintain it there because dithering around whilst peoples lives are being horribly constrained and the economy likewise until the cavalry arrives with a vaccine is not a plan and nor is a relaxation of the lock down without a strategy to prevent the epidemic consequently rebounding. Normality for people and the economy can only return when people are confident that by leaving their homes they are not playing Russian roulette.

Long interview with BBC favourite Jeremy Hunt on World at One – so why on earth no questions about the pandemic planning, the 2016 planning exercise and the censoring of it. What was his roll in this as health secretary at the time? But no this is the BBC after all.

Bill Gates, who knows more about global health than most, warned about the risks of a virus pandemic in 2015. He said that there was no global strategy, there was inadequate cooperation and that there was not enough money.

And this case before the Brexiteers and Trump put a dagger into the gut of cooperation. Looks like Mr Gates was right and the isolationists have been proven desperately wrong. Again.

Actually some very qualified people were warning the US government prior to 2015. They also warned that the reliance on China for materials of prime importance (reagents etc) was a national security risk.

Anyway.
The whole thing is a dreadful mess.
Few..it seems to me ( from my window) are either “social distancing” or “locking down”.
No one knows who to trust.
Few trust the govt.
The Left can smell blood.
And what on Earth will happen when we all emerge from our houses, long-haired and blinking into the glare of an economic nuclear winter?
Surely some in govt have cold feet by now??

Whatever they decide to do in terms of gradually lifting restriction – I suspect my wife and myself (attractively described by my sons as “The Elders”) will be probably be continuing in self-isolation for a long time to come. I don’t see any real alternative…

Surely the solution lies with PHE and their inability to utilize testing capabilities throughout
The country .I have a nagging suspicion they are still not cooperating with other organizations that could help to rapidly increase testing
Hancock needs to step in now and make this happen

We don’t know the number of cases in the UK because testing is in arrears. We don’t know the number of deaths attributable solely to Coronavirus and the number for which it is one cause of several. This is particularly true of deaths in care homes.

So we are flying blind.

Since deaths are a lagging indicator, we should start to relax controls when the death rate has dropped for a complete week.

But the death rate is more or less normal. There has been no spikes of any significance and what spikes there have been to date are less than in the past (eg 2017++ other years) when no lock downs were deemed necessary!

Yes, they are just counting the normal flu death rates (and adding others) to try to make a big drama out of it. Today 857 died, but in the 2nd week of Jan 2015, 1660 died (and that was without fiddling the figures), but no lockdown and no media drama. Obviously this is really about something else.

We do not need to continue flying blind. Last week it was announced that sample.level.antibody testing was underway with the help of Porton Down. First results were meant to be the weekend just gone. With these it ought to be possible to estimate background prevalence, but we have heard nothing. By the 13 th April decision there should be completed at least 3500 antibody tests, the data should be available.

Rather than plotting how to sacrifice thousands for the sake of our fake “economy” you should be plotting how to eradicate this virus that your colleagues let into the country. At work I have to do Risk Assessments for trivial tasks. It is the law that every work activity has a risk assessment. A risk assessment that came out with a one in thirty probability of a fatality would be completely unacceptable. No job is that dangerous, probably including the military on active service. Yet that is the level of risk faced by a 50 year old being made to work in one of those expensive coffee shops, by being exposed to Covid-19 infection. This virus can be eradicated in just a few weeks given the will to do so, all you have to do is keep people separated and not let anyone into the country without a clear test result.

We do indeed need ‘greater visibility’ – please add to the list “Has HMG made active provision for swift requistioning of temporarily redundant leisure-industry resources for isolation of key at-risk frontline personnel off-duty, who would otherwise have to risk virus transmission by their necessary use of public transport in urban areas?”

Public transport has always been a top bug-spreader.

(Just f’rinstance, the huge Marriott hotel – former County Hall – is right across the road from St. Thomas’ Hospital. It could not only provide a comfortable off-duty refuge for heroic, exhausted Tommy’s folks coming off shift, but also relieve transmission risks by providing temporay quarantine facilities both for recovery patients and for many others who would otherwise need to use public transport to and from home to keep going).

The Realm is now awash with hotels suddenly desperate for some sort of business … and likewise there are now plenty of highly-mobile cruise ships offering huge accomodation whose owners are similarly desperate.

This was suggested many comments weeks ago but so far the only people provided with hotels, in the news, have been those living on the street. Health workers and other essential workers are forced to use Khan’s overcrowded tube and buses. The lack of foresight is amazing. Italy also kept public transport going to the surprise of Chinese helpers.

My friend Bryan Harris did say that he thought that a bit of censorship was creeping in, who was it who said I despise what you say but I defend to the Death your right to say it, or something along those lines
He thought that posts that were critical of the Tory party quietly disappeared!
I do hope that isn’t the case?

of course it does, and Sir John has held back mine. You have a choice, either throw a hissy fit and don’t try to post, or accept it is his diary and will do what he thinks is right. He includes nonsense regularly from what I would term the gullable, and detail posted by ‘scientists’ as fact. From time to time he obviously feels criticism of politics, mostly what passed as Conservative, to be rather sharp and painful – thus excluded.

Do we have to keep the whole of the UK on lockdown based on our biggest Cities {London}? Can’t the cities be on lockdown and other areas start to get back more gradually, whilst isolating the most easily affected groups for longer, if we can shop for them it would ease up delivery of food problems.

We need to free up supplies of PPE to all organisations working now increase UK capacity to make it, other workers will begin to run out of gel and masks when supplies run out. There are people out there making your daily bread, getting milk into stores, we need to keep them open! It’s ok NHS workers banging their own drum for everyone to “STAY IN” they won’t say that if they themselves start to starve and food shelves empty. We have to keep a balance, keep calm and not just panic react to everything.

Just confirmed that my brother-in-law had Covid 19 in January/early February. He was in hospital for 4 days. He has heart problems so vulnerable. Lives in London. Lots of spreading the germ between mid Jan and late March lockdown. And that’s assuming he was among the first to get it.

It was arrogant to think you can control an epidemic.
However you can try to stop an epidemic and beforehand you can try to keep a disease out of your country, but neither of these has been tried.
I do not think that the government, which is wedded to open borders and mass immigration and the acceptance of self-declared refugees, considered closing the borders.
There is no acknowledgment in the pandemic plans produced by the UK civil service since 2004 and similar to a EU plan produced in the 1990s that Britain is an island.

I work but am also a Landlord. So far one Tennant in difficulty, but to be fair she’s a good Tennant and doing her bit to keep the house clean and what have you without needing to be asked, so I’ve written the rent off for the duration of the crisis.

Indeed government actively encouraging tenants not to pay their rents but gives landlords no assistance at all. Many need the rents to pay their mortgages. Government is also taxing them on profits that are not even being made. Further tightening on LEA licensing and other red tape further also pushing up their costs endlessly.

We are all going to get the covid-19 infection, certainly over the period projected for a general vaccine to become available and distributed.
Given this fact, the only consideration is to keep the level of people needing hospitalization to below NHS long term capacity, as shortages will be addressed in 4-5 weeks (PPE, ventilators, beds etc.)
My guess is that once admissions reach 50% of peak, we can start relaxation of economic activity, assuming that reliable antibody tests are available and we keep the older and especially the medically weak people in lockdown, with suitable provisions supplied by post infected i.e. “clean from infection” people.
At that stage we will be racing quite quickly towards a herd immunity, which will probably be there by September (depends on % at which herd immunity is set).
So by September older people can start taking their chances outside, when assured of proper medical treatment if infected.

The medical establishment in the UK will not allow tests for immunity to be used if they are not 100% accurate. The Koreans use these successfully but in the UK these are not acceptable and PHE is waiting until sufficient people have had the virus and built up immunity. This will take a month. They are not willing to risk any chance of someone buying a test and it showing positive and then finding that it was the wrong virus and catching covid. For people at low risk and unable to work because of a very small risk, this is going to be damaging. But that is defensive medicine, which in the UK rules.

It’s good to hear that £750,000,000 of taxpayers money has been allocated to charities during the coronavirus crisis, in addition to the taxpayers money which they already receive. Many worthwhile charities need this funding in order to continue their vital work.

What safeguards have been put in place to prevent this money being funnelled to executive remuneration or other abuses?

For example, it is noteworthy that 25% of the disgraced World Health Organisation funding comes from government grants and 75% from non- governmental, often charitable, sources.

GW, I think there is a bit of a clue in your first two words – he is not an agony aunt. Write to Messrs Raab and Hancock yourself, their email addresses are on the government website, or pursue it through your own MP.

It does seem that we are about the worst point for deaths per day (touch wood). Hopefully, we can get the children back to school on Tuesday 14th April, the day after Easter.

Today, there was a sad case reported on TV. A nurse has had to resign her job to look after her father who is terminally ill with cancer. Is there no way that a care worker could do home visits, leaving the nurse to take back her job?

I’m moving swiftly to the position that the partial lockdown is doing so much economic damage that we have to start lifting restrictions sooner rather than later.

About John Redwood

John Redwood won a free place at Kent College, Canterbury, and graduated from Magdalen College Oxford. He is a Distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has set up an investment management business, was both executive and non executive chairman of a quoted industrial PLC, and chaired a manufacturing company with factories in Birmingham, Chicago, India and China. He is the MP for Wokingham, first elected in 1987.